One of the central points my wife teaches her yoga students is the importance of mentally staying in the moment, particularly when it's uncomfortable. "Take the opportunity to observe your body's reaction to the pose. Let your awareness stay in your body. Don't run from it, experience the feeling." She says those kinds of things when having people hold a pose for extended periods of time and it seems to make an actual difference.

It's interesting to note that you can train to increase the awareness of your own body. In Aikido we train to increase our sensitivity to uke's body, and we could probably extend that to include many of O Sensei's views about our connection with our environment and the universe.

We practice a one-handed throw similar to Ikkyo, that's primarily an exercise that teaches how to push a rope. We twist the wrist to immobilize the arm, then drive up the arm so the sholder rolls over and down. We'd say "extend Ki up uke's arm" if we weren't a Yoshinkan dojo. You can really feel the tension in uke's arm and it tells you if you're going to get the throw.

Whether we call it Ki, Chi, Prana or awareness, when you put it in uke's sholder, you can almost always get the throw. Thoughts on that?